KEM, seems like one minute you're curled into the fetal position saying we're all gonna die from runaway methane farts, next minute you arrogantly suggest that it's too cold up there in Canada to fight over it. Strange talk on this important issue of the sovereignty of nations, but jeez mate, at least try to be consistent about the temperature thing, and read up on 1812.

From what I have been able to determine this action appears to be that of a small activist separatist group and has not been sanctioned by the Lakota, Nakota, or Dakota Peoples. It seems to be a public relations effort to break the media blackout of American Indian issues and to force a public awareness that Treaties are a two way street. If America breaks it's Treaties with the Indians, which it has, then the Indians have the legal right, according to Russell Means, to reject the Treaty and take the land back. Remember that the Treaties involved Indians trading land for negotiated benefits for as long as the rivers flow and the grass shall grow. What most American People do not understand is that what the Indians receive in Treaty payments is not welfare, and it often involves health care and education.

Well said Doom & Gloom.

Our Indian issues do not get covered in the mainstream media and one must dig very deeply to find the truth.

Thank you my Brothers and Sisters in The Nation! I will be watching to see what AmeriKKKa does about this and if the passports are recognized by the Facsist government of the US, I'll be signing up. FREE Leonard Peltier!!

I support my brothers and sisters in this effort from the bottom of my heart. However, I lack confidence in the US Government's willingness to accept this action. They have not been honest or true in the past and they are in fact a rogue nation. The odds are that they will use force to block this action. Whether this is an embarrassment or not in the international community will be disregarded, especially in the current shameless administration. I would like to be wrong on this, but I don't think I am.
Wild Winter

Mr. Means's declaration of Native American rights has been a long time coming.

The paragraphs below are excerpted from:

http://www.mediamonitors.net/gillespie6.html

Roy H. May, Jr., writing in Joshua and the Promised Land, notes: "During the Middle Ages, European Christians launched military campaigns to take the Holy Land from the Muslims. Early on the Crusaders took Jericho. Following the example of Joshua 6, they marched around the city led by clergy carrying sacred banners and pictures of Christian saints. When the walls did not fall down as expected, they attacked and overran the city. Then they massacred the inhabitants. Jews were locked in their synagogue and burned alive. Even some of the Crusaders were horrified by the slaughter."

As May points out, the great American experiment in democracy was founded upon Biblically authorized land theft and slaughter: "The Puritans who disembarked in Massachusetts in 1620 believed they were establishing the New Israel. Indeed, the whole colonial enterprise was believed to have been guided by God. . . . Promised Land imagery figured prominently in shaping English colonial thought. The Pilgrims identified themselves with the ancient Hebrews. They viewed the New World as the New Canaan. They were God's chosen people headed for the Promised Land. . . . This self-image of being God's Chosen People called to establish the New Israel became an integral theme in America's self-interpretation." But to write, as May does, that "most land was taken violently," is to diminish the savagery of the European conquest of America.

In New England Frontier: Puritans and Indians 1620-1675 by Alden T. Vaughan, we learn that the Puritans did not merely kill their native enemies but savagely mutilated them, too. They frequently set fire to native villages, shooting down those who were fortunate enough not to be burned alive. When they allied with a tribe, the Puritans demanded the body parts of their enemies as proof of the tribe's sincerity. After battle they often sold captured natives into slavery, and they were not averse to looking on as their native allies roasted and ate the dead. The Puritans viewed themselves as God's enforcers of law and order, prayed for guidance before setting out to hunt down their native enemies, and justified their own savagery by proclaiming their enemies to be "Satan's horde" who had "sinned against God and man."

May notes that, "Land rights of native Americans were never taken seriously. Rather, they were seen as obstacles to the colonists' need for land. The Puritans did not respect the farms of Native Americans. They sought 'legal' ways to get their land. If a Native American broke one of the rigid Puritan religious laws, the fine was paid by giving up land. In this manner, some Puritans were able to amass large landholdings through the Massachusetts courts. John Winthrop, for example, obtained some 1,260 acres along the Concord River. . . . When the 1600s ended, most Native Americans in New England had been killed or driven away."

One hundred and sixty years later and half a continent to the West, the lot of Native Americans had not improved. In 1864, at Sand Creek in the Colorado Territory, a Methodist lay preacher and U.S. Cavalry officer, Col. John M. Chivington planned and led a liquored-up troop of irregular cavalry in an unprovoked surprise attack against a peaceful and unsuspecting native village. Over 200 Arapahos and Cherokees, mostly women and children, were slaughtered and mutilated.

"The women and children were screaming and wailing, the men running to their lodges for their arms and shouting advice and directions to one another . . . Many of the people had preceded us up the creek, and the dry bed of the stream was now a terrible sight: men, women, and children lying thickly scattered on the sand . . . We . . . came to a place where the banks were very high and steep . . . and the older men and the women had dug holes or pits under the banks, in which the people were now hiding . . . Most of us . . . had been wounded before we could reach this shelter; and there we lay all that bitter cold day from early in the morning until almost dark, with the soldiers all around us, keeping up a heavy fire most of the time . . . That night will never be forgotten as long as any of us who went through it are alive . . . Many who had lost wives, husbands and children, or friends, went back down the creek and crept over the battleground among the naked and mutilated bodies of the dead. Few were found alive, for the soldiers had done their work thoroughly . . ." said George Bent, a Southern Cheyenne.

". . . I did not see a body of a man, woman, child but was scalped; and in many instances their bodies were mutilated in the most horrible manner, men, women, and children--privates cut out, etc. I heard one man say that he had cut a woman's private parts out and had them for exhibition on a stick; I heard another man say that he had cut the fingers off an Indian to get the rings on the hand . . . I also heard of numerous instances in which men had cut out the private parts of females, and stretched them over the saddle bows, and wore them over their hats, while riding in the ranks," reported First Lieutenant James Connor, United States Army.

The Sand Creek Massacre outraged Easterners, but it seemed to please many in the Colorado Territory. Chivington took a leading role in a Denver celebration where he delighted audiences with war stories and displayed 100 native scalps. Later denounced after a congressional investigation, Chivington was forced to resign. When asked at a military inquiry why children had been killed, one of the soldiers quoted Chivington as saying, "Nits make lice." Chivington had come to Colorado to avoid more hazardous duty in the Civil War battles then raging in the South. He was known as a militant abolitionist, but his views on race seem to have been inconsistent and confused at best, not unlike some Americans' views today.

Colonization schemes and ideologies based on Promised Land/Chosen People theology tend to corrupt and demoralize Judeo-Christian colonists almost as effectively as they damage, displace, and destroy communities and unhinge those unfortunate enough to have their lands, homes, and families targeted by Judeo-Christian colonizers. In 1996, the United Methodist Church officially apologized to Native Americans for the crimes of Col. John M. Chivington and the Sand Creek massacre. In the weeks after the September 11th attacks, President George W. Bush, yet another Texan and a Methodist, made a public comment that harkened back to an earlier era in American history: "When I was a kid I remember that they used to put out there in the Old West a wanted poster. It said, 'Wanted: Dead or Alive.'" History is not always kind to those who resort to wholesale slaughter in the name of security interests when somewhat narrower personal and partisan political interests, commercial interests, and national aggrandizement are the actual motivating factors. Promised Land/Chosen People theology/ideology and the demoralizing ultra-nationalistic criminality it so often engenders pose an unacceptable threat to human civilization in an era of weapons of mass destruction. But perhaps such concerns have escaped both the president and Bill Moyers.

Campaigns of land theft and mass murder based upon Judeo-Christian theology were also carried out enthusiastically by European Christians in Central and South America and in Africa. Among the Afrikaners, May notes that the Promised Land/Chosen People theology ultimately, "found its political expression and program in the National Party. This program was based on racial separateness and the belief that Afrikaners were set apart for a special mission in God's designs for political organization. Apartheid and Promised Land went hand in hand."

White man came across the sea
He brought us pain and misery
He killed our tribes, he killed our creed
He took our game for his own need

We fought him hard we fought him well
Out on the plains we gave him hell
But many came too much for cree
Oh will we ever be set free?

Riding through dustclouds and barren wastes
Galloping hard on the plains
Chasing the redskins back to their holes
Fighting them at their own game
Murder for freedom a stab in the back
Women and children and cowards attack

Run to the hills run for your lives
Run to the hills run for your lives

Soldier blue on the barren wastes
Hunting and killing their game
Raping the women and wasting the men
The only good indians are tame
Selling them whisky and taking their gold
Enslaving the young and destroying the old

thanks cmichaelg49 for that great post. i've been saying the same thing for a while...xianity is not a religion of peace, it has a bad history

The Lakota are making a statement, a point, but it won't really solve anything. Nevertheless, it's good to see.

However, what might solve something is for the entire United States to secede from Washington, DC, leaving Bush and the rest of the politicians to themselves.

Could they do anything about anything We, the People did if the police said no, if the military said no, if we all got together and said no?

I read that there's a petition going around that's asking folks to agree to withhold a percentage of their taxes once 100,000 signatures were gathered. So how about a petition where 100,000 or more people agree not to join the military? 100,000 or more people agree to not buy SUV's? 100,000 or more police officers agree not to arrest protesters for protesting peacefully? 100,000 or moe soldiers agree not to fight in wars that weren't declared to be wars by Congress? 100,000 or more people agree to stop supporting their local churches until they condemn war? And so on.

If we get together they can't arrest all of us.

This isn't going to change anything. The US government will never allow this and will essentially laugh at them. If they try to break away by force they will be crushed. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for the freedom of the First Nations peoples, however it is just words, and I seriously doubt anything solid will come out of this.

Wow - I'm really behind the times! Turns out they don't have a casino as such but instead they have had a bingo hall since they got a 1M grant in 2005. Hard to find out much; very fancy web page but little real info to be found. Link:
http://www.sioux.org and Lakota Sioux in the search box.

It looks to me as if they are really ready to expand into real casino territory. So maybe this threat to secede is a way to put pressure on the gov. Hey - it's worked before and for a lot of tribes.

The BIA site is (as usual) hopeless. Even less there than on the Sioux site. Don't try to download the "draft agreement" unless you have a really big computer - it crashed mine, but then I'm behind the times, like I said above, and so is my computer.

But I found nothing that would make me think more favorably about this whole thing -

I hope and expect recognition of their independent statehood from Bolivia and Venezuela. I'm glad Russell Means is no longer working with the CIA as he did against Nicaragua.

AWESOME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! :D

This is a great move, however, the Sioux tribes that secede should watch their backs. Prevention of Violent Radicalism and Homegrown Terrorism" bill (H.R. 1955)would label these people as radical extremists. The US would be fighting the Indian Wars all over again, and I would hate to see anything happen to the native peoples.

Best of luck...didn't seem to work that well for Sitting Bull but who knows, maybe this time.

Good luck with that, it didn't work out for us here in Georgia when we tried to succeed back in 1861.

But, shouldn't the Kiowa be included in the settlement, since they owned the land before being driven out by the Lakota in 1775?

Finally, some good news. I really hope this doesn't have a bloody outcome. But it is still a sign that there's hope for the opressed.

Good luck with that, it didn't work out for us here in Georgia when we tried to succeed back in 1861.

But, shouldn't the Akara and the Kiowa be included in the settlement, since they owned the land before being driven out by the Lakota Sioux moving in from Minnesota in 1775?

GO INDIGI.

THE LIGHT AND LOVE of the indigineous people will turn this planet rightside up.

when we all realize we are indigenous - AH! we all rightly belong here. not by tyranny but by love and sharing and STAYING HUMAN.

thank you LAKOTA for giving so much to this planet. please lead us all to our own indigenous roots. please show us how to remove the shackles of colonialism, racism, classism and MONOTHEISM backed BY DEATH.

thank you thank you.

HO.

The Spirit of the Seminole Lives and they are prospering in Florida.

Here is a song I sing about it by Will Mclean.... I'm a little juiced but I remebered all the words!
http://www.retroactive.com/music/osceola.mp3

1
In a dungeon deep in St Augustine chief Osceola wept
For his people and his golden land his body had not slept.
then wildcat said "Oh Chief, I beg you go with me
to stand against our mortal foe
and Osceola raised his proud head high
Said do this before I die

2
Wildcat brother to the grassy waters take the Seminole
There no white man can invade to leave you lying dead and cold
I will not live among such evil men
who mock the sign of truce and flag of white
and honer not their given sacred word
My name will be the light. (Chief Osceola wept)

3
The light that burns in every warriors soul in dark and hidden reaches
They can never drive us from our land or suck our blood like leaches
My spirit walks with those of you who die and
those of you who always will remain
Upon this blood stained blessed flowered land
to fight and fight again (Chief Osceola wept)...
to fight and fight again.

End or repeat first verse.

I thought they should have done it back in 2000 when the DEA bombed their hemp farms out. Better late than never though as like all other tribes, they've been mistreated by the US government anyway.

Outstanding!!!!!!!! If all of you want to read a really good book that foreshadows this, read Jeff Benedict's "Without Reservation."

Obviously we need another General Custer to settle this once and for all.

I think we have a few of them.

I would feel sorry for the people who are going to find themselves with new landlords, except...
Well, 1) they were never supposed to be there in the first place.
2) I have seen photos of the signs forbidding dogs and Indians from entering bars and stores. (Hey, they were only taken down in the 1970s).

I do have friends who live there, but they can move or simply work with the new government.

After the smoke clears and the bodies are rotted away after we have our next depression, the Indians may have their country back. They'll likely survive the coming mayhem.

Of course it will not be quite as clean as it was in 1492.

Now Free Peltier!!!!

In the book, Phoenix Rising, by Mary Summerain, her mentor, No Eyes, a blind Lakota indian, predicts the return to native American ways.

It's a good book; you might want to check it out.

It's the same American scam. We invade the land we want, then appear honest and decent and enter (through force) into a written agreement with the invaded people, which no one clearly understands and which will have several subsequent forced revisions, then we continue the invasion and accquisition of land's wealth through continued occupation. The wealthy, greedy elite get the invaded people's land - mineral, timber, water and agricultural benefits, then renig on origianal agreement and physically silence indiginous opposition. Indians are corralled into detention camps called reservations - poor food, slow supplies, no citizenship - they become non-entities invaders hopes will die.

Try Iraq today and subprime loans - fraud, corruption, greed, indentured servitude, and, as the saying goes, "who benefits?"

And, what the average American doesn't realize is that he/she is next on the list with falling wages, inflation, loss of jobs, loss of pensions, continued mal distribution of wealth coupled with an open-arms offer to get one's ass shot off in the Middle East or have one's head screwed up for life from disease, depleated uranium, or roadside bombs as the VA continues with insufficient and in adequate veterans treatment.

Go back to the Veterans March on Washington in the early 1930s. Republican administration after Republican administration failed WWI vets, who were also suffering the elite's induced Depression. Check out Maj Genl Smedley Darlington Butler's encounter with Wall Street.

Or, become a Black Shirted mercenary, make big bucks and responsible only to der Furher.

Americans better watch out! The Lakota are on the right track.

Seems like a good strategy, just hope they stopped up enough of the loopholes so that it doesn't backfire.

If it works, the strategy will be exported.

My new home...I'm on my way!

Peace and good luck brothers and sisters.

They have a billion dollars in the bank that our government gave them? __ Wanna bet? That money belongs to China now.

Can't they claim Arizona? ______Oh never mind, that was Mexican property.

This brings tears to my eyes. In a good way. I wonder if they can now shelter American soldiers who refuse to fight the illegal war in Iraq?

At first I thought this was from the Onion. After checking the byline I said "Hooray". This is great. I hope it doesn't lead to bloodshed. But fear, in my opinion, is NEVER a reason to not do something. I hope this is just one more straw on the shrub camels back. I hope that bastard has so much to worry about he's created his own hell. And I wish the very best for the Lakota people. I cetainly recognise their independance.

Little by little people are standing up straight. Little pieces of the truth come out drip, drip, drip. Now if we can keep the democrats from screwing things up... Now I'm depressed again.

Good for them! Now why don't the rest of the states follow suit! I have been thinking this for years. When the states start seceding then Washington will take notice. They get their power from all these states that claim to be part of a united country. But take away their strength through the combined united of the states and they are isolated. The rest of the world will know that we of the other states of this union of states do not support the unethical genocidal policies of Washington. What are they gonna do? Declare war on all of US? The states that give them their (Washington's) belief that they are more than just a bunch of thugs. Of course, the south tried this and we know what happened to them. But now its not just the south that wants to secede. Its the north and the south. Could they fight the north and the south? Oh well, its just an idea, which I'm sure people will consider idiotic.

"Means said anyone could live in the Lakota Nation, tax free, as long as they renounced their U.S. citizenship. The nation would issue drivers licenses and passports, but each community would be independent. "It will be the epitome of individual liberty, with community control," Means said."

That is what excites me the most. We'll see how this works. I hope for the best. Native peoples need to lead the way back toward a way of life that is sustainable and just.

We need to look back at the Articles of Confederation and reconsider a lot of those ideas.

Hooray!!! My taxes have been cut by half! Come on folks...this is such a joke. Simple, land was acquired by the strongest, that is how it was. Take a look a the world...it was all divided up...and re-divided up in the same fashion. Come on...when are we going to work on real life problems instead of getting mired down in such mockery as this. I say, give em their independence. No more subsidies. And if they want to take back land that they "claim" was theirs...let em try. I'm sure we have a few farmers in the area that would gladly take care of the up rise!

As for the money that was awarded them...well, we have been giving them free money for centuries...why would the latest be any different.

Interesting and hopeful. Will the Lakota be the vanguard for the rest of the native peoples?

And what will the rest of us do when this outlaw government goes after them? Remember what happened the last time AIM tried to fight back? What will we do to support them? Better to start thinking in these terms before things get much crazier.

Being the change we want to see is no empty slogan. Indeed, it's the only way toward a sane world.

Is it possible people who are not native Americans to join the Lakota Sioux nation? If so, I'm interested.

If history is any lesson.
The US will now find evidence that Russell Means has, is, is about to or wants to aquire WMD's. Is planning to align itself with N.Korea & Iran. Time another wounded knee...er we mean negotiations. Best of luck Mr. Means. I do so hope it works. And if it does, I'd be glad to join you.

Awwww. How cute.

It's an interesting try, but it doesn't have the legal backing of the Oglala Sioux Tribe.

Even then it would be a courageous but tough choice. If the legally accepted Oglala Sioux Tribe declared its treaties void, the U.S. could always impose heavy tariffs to all trade with the tribal nation, require prohibitively expensive passports, cut off all foreign aid except as negotiated, and so on. The U.S. government has never been above starving a sovereign tribe, or a dependent tribe either.

As a native South Dakotan, I'm troubled by the giddy responses above. Do you really believe the federal government won't do whatever's necessary to eradicate this movement? It may come to Mr. Means and his comrades being branded terrorists, which equals anything goes, as we're all aware. This will have a tragic outcome, make no mistake.

But there's another tragedy here as well. From this progressive's perspective, tribalism is a more negative than positive force. Aren't we trying to come together rather than divide apart? Easy words in a place as apartheided as S. Dakota, I know. Means says he's not doing this to embarass the US - though that's exactly what's happened. Whether it's his intention or not, perhaps this will at least able to shame the US into some kind action in its poorest counties. I just hope it's not the wrong kind of action ...which is what we can probably expect.

Don't be a fool. The Irish and the people of East Timor are not going to recognize Lakotaland in the face of the US. Hugo Chavez alone will have the honor.

"Means said anyone could live in the Lakota Nation, tax free, as long as they renounced their U.S. citizenship."

What if you're not a US citizen to begin with? Well whatever the case.. if it works I'm moving to Lakotaland.

I salute and honor the Lakota Nation.

And the clock...

Tick tock...

I will recognize the Lakota Nation.

While we are at it, I will readily recognize Texas as well.

So all these morons who are robbing our country can go back to the Income tax free state and take their war mongering ways with them. Blackwater, Chevron, Oxy, the Star wars initiative....

I would hope that when Taiwan formally secedes from China, they will recieve the same support from the people posting here.

But I doubt they will...

Greaseman: "I would hope that when Taiwan formally secedes from China, they will recieve the same support from the people posting here.

But I doubt they will…"

Yeah, that excited but fleeting kind of support that's not nearly as sincere as it is uninformed. Love that.